Networking services have become increasingly important in today's society. One feature of networking services relates to client or source awareness. Certain services, functions, or capabilities may be provided to a group of end users or to clients based on a corresponding source profile. Devices or components within a network must generally be able to identify such a source profile before offering selected enhanced services, functions, or capabilities to a targeted group of end users. Accordingly, sufficient information must be made available at various networking layers in order to allow for accurate identification of a client or a source.
In some environments, the source identification may be hidden or otherwise transformed such that the original source is hidden from the perspective of the destination point that receives a message. This translates into a device or a component that receives the message being generally unable to determine a point of origin associated with the data request. This blindness or shielding creates a problem in attempting to offer services to a select group of users based on their source profiles. In some instances, the inability to determine the origination of a data flow precludes a device or a component from offering services based on the identity of an end user.